


let the only sound be the overflow

by openended



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: (i mean it's a threesome but it's not a Threesome yfeel? this is rated t for boobs), I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THE OCEAN, Multi, Sleepy Cuddles, also of important note is half elf/sea elf/triton if anyone was perplexed by anatomy, three people who love the ocean first and each other second, triad: f/f/m
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 13:43:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19947115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: the ocean is big and we are not





	let the only sound be the overflow

**Author's Note:**

> These three are NPCs in the D&D campaign I'm running. I had feelings, words ensued.

Warm morning sunlight falls through the small windows, casting patterns onto her skin. She shifts, digging her bare feet underneath the blankets. Edal reaches out and slowly twirls a red ringlet around his finger, marveling – not for the first time – at the contrast of the red of her hair against the teal of his skin.

Her shirt slides up as she stretches, revealing the tentacles tattooed across her torso. The head of the octopus is on her lower back, but the tentacles intertwine with seaweed and kelp, dodging – or perhaps chasing, he’s never asked – the school of fish swimming up her ribs. With a small, sleepy noise, she turns over, hugging her pillow underneath her head. He gentle pulls his finger from her hair and instead trails it down her spine.

The ship creaks below them and a light gust of wind comes through the window, catching in her hair, lifting the ends to flutter in the wind that disappears as quickly as it arrived. Her skin glitters copper in the sun, but the black ink of her tattoos seems to swallow the light. He traces the kraken swimming up her arm and across her shoulders.

He’s always wondered the story behind the kraken – five years together like this, ten years crewmates, and he hasn’t seen it yet – but never asked. They’re all allowed their secrets. He’s watched her other tattoos flash gold right before she shifts, in the split second before she dives in the water. He’s watched new ones appear on her skin, watched the pain and contortion of her first change into a new form – so unlike Kelpie’s seamless shift into anything that swims – watched her small smile as she traces the new image on her skin.

She pulled the kraken from somewhere, for some reason. She pulled it into _herself_ , transformed into it. She _was_ the kraken.

He’s sailed across most of the Dragovar Ocean. The biggest things he’s seen _are_ kraken. That Calia once felt the need to become one – whether for fun or for survival – has always slightly unnerved him.

“I can feel you staring,” she murmurs, half-muffled by the pillow.

“It’s a nice view,” he grins.

She pulls the pillow out from under her head and throws it in his general direction. Edal laughs and settles it between them.

Outside and above, he hears the crew shouting for the ladder.

Calia flips over and grabs the pocketwatch dangling from a hook above their bed. She flicks it open and then glares up at the ceiling and the deck above it. “About time,” she mutters, closing the watch and letting it drop. It clinks against the wood a few times. She yawns.

“She belongs in the ocean,” he reminds her.

“It’s been fourteen hours,” she says. "The ocean is big and we are not.”

It’s the captain speaking now, even half-naked with sleep-tousled hair. He doesn’t argue, as much because she’s the captain as because she’s right. But he, too, feels the urge to dive down into the deep. To float amongst the kelp forests, to allow water to pass through his gills, to kick down, down, down to the sandy bottom, to look upward and not see the surface.

Calia has saltwater running through her veins. She is _of_ the sea. But she does not _belong_ to it.

They do.

There’s a splash and then one of his favorite voices amidst the others. Too quiet to hear her words, but enough to know she’s back, safe and sound, on the _Courtland_.

Calia sits up and takes a swig from her canteen. She’s due on deck in a few minutes – even the captain takes watch in the crow’s nest, one of her rules – but that’s a few minutes from now. Edal reaches out and grabs her around her waist, tugging her back down amidst tangled sheets and blankets.

She makes an undignified noise and some of her water sloshes out of the canteen and onto her skin. It glistens in the sun and he trails his finger through it, drawing delicate designs before it evaporates. She squirms out of his reach, stealing her arm out of his grasp for herself, and screws the lid back on her canteen before hanging it on its hook next to her watch. Then, without any protest at all, she settles back next to him. The water drips down her collarbone and between her breasts. He follows it with his finger.

The door opens. Calia looks up over his shoulder. "Anything interesting?" She'll be captain later, when Kelpie hasn't just shifted back after fourteen hours and still isn't quite sure how legs are meant to work.

Kelpie slides into their bed between them, tangling her legs with theirs. "Nothing that can't wait," she murmurs around a yawn and nestles her head on the pillow Calia threw at him.

Edal coasts his hand over her pale skin, such a contrast to him and Calia. She catches his hand in hers and tugs it around her. The small movement causes her skin to catch in the light. As much as Calia's glitters copper, Kelpie's skin shimmers iridescent, mother of pearl. The inside of an oyster in the summer sun. 

He presses a kiss to her shoulder and takes a breath. She smells of the sea. Of _home_.

A trickle of seawater flows out from her gills and she coughs as her body adjusts to breathing air again. He squeezes her hand. There are many terrible things about leaving the water behind; remembering how to breathe the dryness of air is one of them. Her soft fingertips brush across the webbing between his fingers as she clasps his hand. She reaches out and settles her other hand on Calia's chest, resting on the dolphin cresting across Calia's breast.

"I have to go," Calia says, carding her fingers through Kelpie's platinum hair. Her few minutes are past gone, which means he's due on deck shortly as well. Still, she stays in bed, drawing invisible patterns on Kelpie's skin. Her patterns travel over him as well, connecting loops and swirls over two of her loves.

The sea is the fourth in their triad, the greatest love of them all. Kelpie could swim away and never return and they wouldn't blame her. He could dive so far that up and down ceased to have meaning, that the surface became a fleeting memory, and they wouldn't blame him.

Calia could sail into the sunset, leaving them both behind to the deep, and they wouldn't blame her.

With a sigh, Calia sits up, letting Kelpie’s hand fall to the bed. She presses a kiss to her cheek, and then his, and slips out of bed. Legs long used to seas much rougher than the calm waves of today, she stands steadier than any land dweller he’s ever met. She dresses quickly – only the tips of the kraken’s tentacles peek out over her shirt, somehow swallowing more of the sun now than they did before – loops the pocketwatch onto its place hanging from her belt, whispers a reminder that his shift started three minutes ago, and leaves to captain her ship. The door closes behind her, but not before he sees her settle her hat atop her head. 

She doesn’t look back and there’s no regret in her posture.

The open water sings its siren's song to them all, above and below.


End file.
